"Poor child! No wonder!" said Laddie, sitting beside her and putting his arm around her. "Suppose I read it for you. May I?"

"Yes," said Sh.e.l.ley. "You read it. Read it out loud. I don't care."

She leaned against him, while he unfolded the white sheet.

"Umph!" he said. "This DOES look bad for you. It begins: 'My own darling Girl.'"

"Let me see!" cried Sh.e.l.ley, suddenly straightening, and reaching her hand.

Laddie held the page toward her, but she only looked, she didn't offer to touch it.

"'My own darling Girl:'" repeated Laddie tenderly, making it mean just all he possibly could, because he felt so dreadfully sorry for her--"'On my return to Chicago, from the trip to England I have so often told you I intended to make some time soon----'"

"Did he?" asked mother.

"Yes," answered Sh.e.l.ley. "He couldn't talk about much else. It was his first case. It was for a friend of his who had been robbed of everything in the world; honour, relatives, home, and money. If Robert won it, he got all that back for his friend and enough for himself--that he could--a home of his own, you know! Read on, Laddie!"

"'I was horrified to find on my desk every letter I had written you during my absence returned to me from the Dead Letter Office, as you see.'"

"Good gracious!" cried mother, picking up one and clutching it tight as if she meant to see that it didn't get away again.

"Go on!" cried Sh.e.l.ley.

"'I am enclosing some of them as they came back to me, in proof of my statement. I drove at once to your boarding place and found you had not been there for weeks, and your landlady was distinctly crabbed.

Then I went to the college, only to find that you had fallen ill and gone to your home. That threw me into torments, and all that keeps me from taking the first train is the thought that perhaps you refused to accept these letters, for some reason. Sh.e.l.ley, you did not, did you?

There is some mistake somewhere, is there not----'"

"One would be led to think so," said father sternly. "Seems as if he might have managed some way----"

"Don't you blame him!" cried Sh.e.l.ley. "Can't you see it's all my fault? He'd been coming regularly, and the other girls envied me; then he just disappeared, and there was no word or anything, and they laughed and whispered until I couldn't endure it; so I moved in with Peter's cousin, as I wrote you; but that left Mrs. Fleet with an empty room in the middle of the term, and it made her hopping mad. I bet anything she wouldn't give the postman my new address, to pay me back.

I left it, of course. But if I'd been half a woman, and had the confidence I should have had in myself and in him---- Oh how I've suffered, and punished all of you----!"

"Never you mind about that," said mother, stroking Sh.e.l.ley's hair.

"Likely there isn't much in Chicago to give a girl who never had been away from her family before, 'confidence' in herself or any one else.

As for him--just disappearing like that, without a word or even a line---- Go on Laddie!"

"'Surely, you knew that I was only waiting the outcome of this trip to tell you how dearly I love you. Surely, you encouraged me in thinking you cared for me a little, Sh.e.l.ley. Only a little will do to begin with----'"

"You see, I DID have something to go on!" cried Sh.e.l.ley, wiping her eyes and straightening up.

"'No doubt you misunderstood and resented my going without coming to explain, and bid you good-bye in person, but Sh.e.l.ley, _I_ SIMPLY DARED NOT. You see, it was this way: I got a cable about the case I was always talking of, and the only man who could give the testimony I MUST HAVE was dying!'"

"For land's sake! The poor boy!" cried mother, patting Sh.e.l.ley's shoulder.

"'An hour's delay might mean the loss of everything in the world to me, even you. For if I lost any time, and the man escaped me, there was no hope of winning my case, and everything, even you, as I said before, depended on him----'"

"Good Lord! I mean land!" cried Leon.

"'If I could catch the train in an hour, I could take a boat at New York, and go straight through with no loss of time. So I wrote you a note that probably said more than I would have ventured in person, and paid a boy to deliver it.'"

"Kept the money and tore up the note, I bet!" said May.

"'I wrote on the train, but found after sailing that I had rushed so I had failed to post it in New York. I kept on writing every day on the boat, and mailed you six at Liverpool. All the time I have written frequently; there are many more here that this envelope will not hold, that I shall save until I hear from you.'"

"Well, well!" said father.

"'Sh.e.l.ley, I beat death, reached my man, got the testimony I had to have, and won my case.'"

"Glory!" cried mother. "Praise the Lord!"

"'Then I scoured England, and part of the continent, hunting some interested parties; and when I was so long finding them, and still no word came from you, I decided to come back and get you, if you would come with me, and go on with the work together.'"

"Listen to that! More weddings!" cried Leon. He dropped on his knees before Sh.e.l.ley. "Will you marry me, my pretty maid?" he begged.

"Young man, if you cut any capers right now, I'll cuff your ears!"

cried father. "This is no proper time for your foolishness!"

"'Sh.e.l.ley, I beg that you will believe me, and if you care for me in the very least, telegraph if I may come. Quick! I'm half insane to see you. I have many things to tell you, first of all how dear you are to me. Please telegraph. Robert.'"

"Saddle a horse, Leon!" father cried as he unstrapped his wallet.

"Laddie, take down her message."

"Can you put it into ten words?" asked Laddie.

"Mother, what would you say?" questioned Sh.e.l.ley.

Leon held up his fingers and curled down one with each word. "Say, 'Dear Robert. Well and happy. Come when you get ready.'"

"But then I won't know when he's coming," objected Sh.e.l.ley. "You don't need to," said Leon. "You can take it for granted from that epistolary effusion that he won't let the gra.s.s grow under his feet while coming here. That's a bully message! It sounds as if you weren't crazy over him, and it's a big compliment to mother. Looks as if she didn't have to know when people are coming--like she's ready all the time."

"Write it out and let me see," said Sh.e.l.ley.

So Laddie wrote it, and she looked at it a long time, it seemed to me, at last she said: "I don't like that 'get.' It doesn't sound right.

Wouldn't 'are' be better?"

"Come when you are ready," repeated Laddie. "Yes, that's better.

'Get' sounds rather saucy."

"Why not put it, 'Come when you choose?'" suggested mother. "That will leave a word to spare, so it won't look as if you had counted them and used exactly ten on purpose, and it doesn't sound as if you expected him to make long preparations, like the other. That will leave it with him to start whenever he likes."

"Yes! yes!" cried Sh.e.l.ley. "That's much better! Say, 'Come when you choose!'"

"Right!" said Laddie as he wrote it. "Now I'll take this!"

"Oh no you won't!" cried Leon. "Father told me to saddle my horse.

She's got enough speed in her to beat yours a mile. I take that!

Didn't you say for me to saddle, father?"